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"Virgin of the Sign" contemporary
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Lent is the time of the search for meaning, the meaning of life professional, considered in terms of vocation, the meaning of my relationship with others, sense of friendship, a sense of my responsibility. There is no trade, no calling that can not be "transformed", was just a little, not in terms of greater efficiency and better organization, but in terms of human value.

That same effort internalizing all of our relationships that we are asked here, because we are free beings, become (unknowingly in many cases) systems that dehumanize prisoners gradually worldwide. And our faith can be meaningful only if it is related with life in all its complexity. A multitude of people think that the necessary changes come only from outside, revolutions and changes in external conditions. To us Christians, to prove that in reality everything comes from within, faith and life by faith.

If so Lent is for man a rediscovery of his faith, it is also a rediscovery of his life, his sense of divine and sacred depth. It is by abstaining from food that we rediscover its sweetness and we learn again to receive God with joy and gratitude. It is reducing the music and entertainment, conversations and interviews, areas that we rediscover the ultimate value of human relations, labor rights and his art. And we rediscover all this simply because we rediscover God himself, because we return to him and in him all that he has given us, in his infinite mercy and love.

Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983), Orthodox priest, theologian, teacher, preacher,
in "The Great Lent : Asceticism and Liturgy in the Orthodox Church " (excerpts)